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Would you buy...

A horse with a "hunter" (outside leg) canter cue?

Otherwise, she fits my bill. She's an Azteca, 14.2h, 9yo, stocky build (currently also FAT build!), great brain, trail safe, barefoot, easy keeper. She is also kid safe, and has recently just been plucking around 2-3 days a week with a 10yo kid.

I gave her a test ride last night, and while she doesn't have the fitness or the experience, by the end of the ride she was riding nicely forward into my hand in a half decent frame. At the walk, she also leg yielded nicely and figured out shoulder in when I asked, and she bends around the leg. Her walk and trot are so smooth and comfy like riding a couch (so smooth that I figured she'd look awful on video, but she was a better mover than I expected, but not super flashy), but the canter leaves a little (ok, a lot) to be desired, though I had her in no frame whatsoever. I'm sure some muscling up and gaining her balance in side reins on the lunge will improve it.

My aspirations are safe, easy going, lower level dressage (1st level for sure, hopefully second) and trail safe. If I do a bit of small jumping so I can do 2 phases, then that's even better (and she does jump).

The only downside is her canter cue being outside leg. I asked inside leg/hip, and she picked up the outside lead while on the rail. I switched cues, and voila, got her leads every time. She seemed quick to learn and willing, and the owner is an acquaintence willling to let me ride her a bit on her property and then do a trial at my barn.

I won't play with the canter cue while trialing her, of course, because she's not mine to screw up But I am looking to see how she improves each ride, and how she muscles up and slims down a bit in more work.

Would you retrain a canter cue to a 9yo, who otherwise seems to get it?

Retraining a canter cue is not a big deal. Like it takes a ride or 2 if the foundations are there (depending on the horse). But retraining the horse to be balanced properly and responsive to the seat might take a little longer. Of course these things are also fundamentally important to a good canter depart. If you are up to these tasks, don't think twice about the canter cue.

Whoohoo! I like these answers! I otherwise like her after one ride, but I get to ride her a fair bit before I decide and can do trial, so I'm not too worried. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't nuts for thinking about changing up her canter. I will definitely put the time in to develop her muscling and balance, from the walk up, and spend some time on the lunge and get her fitness going. I'm in no rush, I just want to see some improvement over the next week or so, and then I can spend all winter bringing her along.

I wouldn't think twice about the canter cue. Balance issues and not stellar canter, maybe, but I wouldn't care if you had to ring a bell to ask her to canter - that's easy to train to the cue you want.

Originally Posted by Silverbridge

If you get anything on your Facebook feed about who is going to the Olympics in 2012 or guessing the outcome of Bush v Gore please start threads about those, too.

When I took H/J lessons back in the dark ages, we used an inside leg cue for canter, and almost always cantered from the walk, not the trot.

As a re-rider many years later, I learned the "outside leg in a windshield-wiper motion" cue, and it's what my mare, and nearly every other horse I've ridden in the past 6 years, knows.

Some dressage people will say this is incorrect, that canter should come from the seat (a slight push to the inside with the inside seatbone), and maintain that the W-W will mess up later training for flying changes... but I've seen very high level riders -- even at the Olympics -- using the W-W (and the seat, because the W-W will also cause you to give the "correct" seat cue) for one-tempis.... so how can it mess things up that much?

Current trainer tried to get me to switch to seat-only because of the purported ill effects of the W-W on changes, but once I made it clear that I'm not riding higher than First Level, she was fine with the W-W. We've also made peace over the walk-to-canter transition, which is apparently considered more advanced, because the mare seems to be better at those than trot to canter.

It tends to be personal preference, really, and that's one of the reasons why riding someone else's GP horse can be a lot more difficult than riding someone else's TL horse. I like the inside leg at the girth/inside seat/outside leg passively back to make sure haunches don't swing out, personally, so you outside-leggers may have some issues convincing my GP horse to canter.

It tends to be personal preference, really, and that's one of the reasons why riding someone else's GP horse can be a lot more difficult than riding someone else's TL horse. I like the inside leg at the girth/inside seat/outside leg passively back to make sure haunches don't swing out, personally, so you outside-leggers may have some issues convincing my GP horse to canter.

Many roads to Rome.

Heck, it's up to horse personal preference, too! My TB who is schooling a variety of levels stopped cantering off outside leg when he started to understand haunches in. Inside seatbone is all I have to use most of the time, but inside leg as well if I haven't gotten him in front of my leg yet or he's holding tension.

Originally Posted by Silverbridge

If you get anything on your Facebook feed about who is going to the Olympics in 2012 or guessing the outcome of Bush v Gore please start threads about those, too.